who cares. they are both people and should be treated equally: one is an idiot who joined the armed services instead of getting an education and the other is a ****** who got gold teeth instead of getting an education.

I can't believe you are so ignorant and fascist that you treat soldiers like gods and shun all others and never give anyone a second chance. Imagine if you ****** up big when you were 16 and when you're in your 50s everyone treats you like a second-class citizen even thought you ended up getting your life straight afterward, but those ********* who went into the military after high school get parades and discounts and every time someone sees them, they tear up and salute and **** .

Everyone deserves respect. Everyone deserves to be treated like a person and not like a god. Just because I don't share your unquestioned infatuation with men in uniform doesn't make me retarded.

You're ******* retarded. One of them is a poor guy who can't afford heart surgery, the other is a criminal who is relatively attractive. If you think being poor is equivalent to being a criminal, then you disgust me.

Reading your comments, it looks like the point you were making is that his veteran status shouldn't be relevant (it's a job like many others), and I can understand where you're coming from. You just did a terrible job phrasing that.

naw, man - OP did a terrible job explaining it.
a) he provided no sources to verify the information
b) he didn't say in how many hours this transpired
c) he edited the amount the wankster had earned
d) he never really gave a good explanation of what the wankster was actually raising money for

And you're right - I'm really discussing the fact that the word "veteran" just HAD to be there. It doesn't matter if he's a veteran OR an ex-criminal - if someone needs heart surgery but can't afford it, it is tragic. It also doesn't happen in the EU at all.

could have wanted to be like his father or grandfather that were in the military, or He could have originally wanted to go to pay for school and found something he liked doing or was making enough money to not want to go to school.

or he could have wanted to be like his media father and had aspirations of being a rapper with gold teeth

I'm sick of conservative US-Americans treating soldiers and veterans like kings and the rest of the people like scum. Some soldiers become heroes when they save lives from the "enemy", but they are also horrible monsters for taking lives from the "enemy" (a.k.a. "people"). Any soldier with a good head on his/her shoulders will tell you how unbelievably awful it is to take a human life. Even Harry Potter and Jesus teach us this. They chose to be professional killers to "protect" those who chose not to be professional killers. The rest of us should try to create a world where war isn't necessary instead of worshiping soldiers and war. Many great nations have risen and fallen and worshiped their warriors. We view them now as barbaric - but are we really any different?

I'm not pro or anit-soldier or patriotism or anything. I'm for love and peace and treating everyone equally. Always putting the word "soldier" or "veteran" in front of someone's introduction is a marketing tactic to tug on the US-American people's heartstrings after they were so deeply moved by the twin tower attacks - the ONLY attack on US soil in history (Revolutionary War happened before the US was the US).

Anyway - please treat everyone with respect and dignity. We may have not all "served" (a.k.a. patrolled around in a humvee and shooting beer cans OR marching to our death, depending on when/where one "serves"), but we are all soldiers fighting the fight of humanity and coping with reality. The very fact that someone can function on a normal social level means he has won the battle of his mind against the forces of our insane, incomprehensible reality that has claimed many a life through mental illness, psychological problems and social disorders.

sorry, I forgot Pearl Harbor. There was also the sinking of the USS Maine in WWI that technically took place in US waters. There was a slogan that went around to help the US gain support for entering WWI: "Remember the Maine!"

Anyway, I think you have a horrible opinion of non-soldiers! I don't have a horrible opinion of soldiers, I just think US-Americans think too highly of them. They are just people like you and me. Maybe they have one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, but how long is active duty? How many soldiers are really in harm's way 100% of the time? How many soldiers simply blindly follow a corrupt agenda and patrol streets in Bosnia or Afghanistan, or simply sit at a base in Germany and march around all day, getting drunk and dicking around and getting paid for all this from US tax dollars? They're not bad people - they are government employees who didn't have to go to school for their training - their training is also paid for by US tax dollars. Their training is also short and gruesome, and the US trains too many kids to beome soldiers. If you compare the % of US high school kids who enlist in the military vs that of any other nation in the world, it nearly matches the defense budget: higher than the next top three nations combined.

Succinctly put: the US is war-hungry nation for some reason. I know it creates jobs (for a while) and nobody dares attach the US when they have such an immense army (but they did back in 2001! or was it the US government that attacked itself?), but the US pays the ultimate price. They think they are the world police and spend more money on that initiative rather than tending to the needs of their own citizens. Millions of kids acquire crippling debt after just four years at a university. The US is the only place this can happen.

TLDR: a US citizen with cancer who can't pay for his treatment is equal to a US veteran who can't pay for his treatment

well, OP didn't provide any sources or any other information except "he wants 25k because his bitch thinks he's cute" (which sounds like a load of bullocks). OP also altered the original image, leading me to believe OP is trying to mislead us and play to our heartstrings and overwhelming national pride by saying "look how amazing and god-like soldiers are! They are way better than douchebag pot-heads. And even though I recognise that the US government has abandoned him and won't pay for his treatment, he's such a good person because he "protected our freedom" in Iraq. Let's forget about the government that put him (and millions of others) through the horrors of war (or the horrors of boredom patrolling a civilian neighbourhood for 2 months) and spends billions on defense then doesn't have 10k to pay for some chemo (not to mention chemotherapy is 2-3 times more expensive in the US than in Europe) - no. Let's instead focus on the fact that he's a veteran and a national hero and deserves our undying support and we should blindly follow the herd and praise our warrior heroes while the common man gets pushed off onto the side."

I don't doubt that a 40-50 year old man is probably wiser, kinder and has led a fuller life than a teenage whigger ******* (from the looks of the photo), but why even make this comparison? Is your faith in humanity now "lost"? Mine is, too. When a nation sings the praises of its military while the mentally ill acquire guns and shoot up schools/theatres and the educational system produces alarmingly sub-standard results, especially given the fact that the US has the 6th highest GDP per capita in the world, then it makes me question the moral fabric of the US. I know it's a huge country with large diversity, but the war mentality seems to trump everything and nearly every global problem gets swept under the red carpet that gets rolled out for the "veterans" that "protect our freedom".

Nothing against soldiers: they chose their profession and some may even feel they are a higher-class citizen because they chose one of the most dangerous jobs in the world and are led to believe that being part of one of the largest militaries in the world will make a difference. Maybe it does. But to treat them like higher-class citizens - to treat ANYONE like higher-class citizens is no longer democracy, but aristocracy. We're not that far off from rewarding prolific warriors (highest kill count etc.) with tax exemption, free housing, free health care, free holidays, while the rest of the US has to work their asses off to get that. If someone chooses public service (military, government, police, etc.) then they accept that they are not in the private sector and they simply receive the salary laid out for them by the government. A policeman, state teacher, sanitation worker, city planner, president and soldier are all equally government-sanctioned heroes. Well, not all of them - maybe some are real dick-heads. And maybe some are really intelligent and hard-workingand deserve their position and elevated government pay. But to just de-facto say "all soldiers are heroes and deserve more than the rest of us" is just the wrong way to look at things.

People are people - soldiers, nurses, pedophiles, serial killers, mentally ill, paraplegics, kids, the elderly, homeless and immigrants included. When we can start treating all of them with respect and love, we'll be a lot better off. And it needs to start now - we gotta stop posting **** about "oh, wow - this guy did something amazing! He helped an old lady across the street.... AND HE'S A ******* SOLDIER!!!!" instant +99999 thumbs.

Sorry, I'm ranting - I'll get downvoted for sure. I just don't want to see another war-hungry super-power rise up while the intellectuals and artists take a back seat and even suffer.

I guess you kind of answered my question. If my choice is to try to help out a normal person or help out a pedophile/serial killer, generally I'll send my support towards the normal person. I tend to give more respect to people who have been upstanding members of society rather than people who have killed, murdered, raped, etc.

Generally, in my book, pedophile/rapists/killers aren't afforded the same love and respect as normal upstanding members of society.